


for all those pages thumbed

by FandomTrash24601



Series: Only Room to Rise [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Absent Parents, Affection, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anti-Witcher Sentiments, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blaviken strikes again, Crying, Death, Death Threats, Gentle Kissing, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier | Dandelion Are Soulmates, Guilt, Guilty Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Having Faith, Hugs, I love me a good library, I'm bringing the self-esteem thing back up because sweet jesus y'all, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insecure Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier has a big heart dang it, Jaskier really loves Witchers you guys, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Kissing, Libraries, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Memorials, Men Crying, Minor Character Death, Murder, Past Rape/Non-con, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Sabotage, Scars, Scenting, Scents & Smells, Self-Esteem Issues, Shame, Shock, Sorry guys, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Witcher Lore, Timeline What Timeline, Underage Rape/Non-con, Witcher Contracts, Witcher Senses, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), all of them - Freeform, but in each other!, even if it's unconventional, fuck guys he has SO MANY FEELINGS, ish?, it's not HAPPY but it's decidedly not unhappy, no beta we die like renfri, no-one escapes him, not in deities, nothing says self esteem issues like trying to sabotage your own happiness, only for people that deserve it though, the perversion of magic to suit my own modern desires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25154110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FandomTrash24601/pseuds/FandomTrash24601
Summary: “I want to write about this,” Jaskier blurts. “About Witchers—who they truly are.” His hands, resting over Geralt’s, tighten as his half-baked idea grows into something much more solid.Title from The Amazing Devil's "Love Run" because that's... what I'm gonna do for this series, it seems.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Only Room to Rise [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806898
Comments: 48
Kudos: 983





	for all those pages thumbed

Jaskier’s not sure whether Yennefer knows where he came from or not; she isn't treating him like a poor abused damsel, although she doesn’t seem like the type to baby him. Maybe she’s like Lambert, who _did_ see where he came from—which is to say, an asshole. Not that he has anything against either of them, really, especially when they seem to be the only ones not treating him oddly. Triss is very sweet, but he’s about ten seconds from yelling at her at any given moment and it’s tiring, especially when he spends a lot of time working with her to make Witcher potions.

“You don’t have to work, you know,” Geralt had told him when the stench of his irritation had grown too strong and he had been very politely ordered to explain why he smelled the way he did. Seeing as Geralt’s the warlord—a man akin to a king—Jaskier knows it wasn’t an empty sentence, that Geralt would truly allow him to do nothing without punishment, but the thought of acceptance had sat poorly. In the end, Geralt had agreed to speak with Triss about treating him less like a glass statuette prone to shattering.

So here he is, standing next to Triss in what’s lovingly referred to as the brewery. She’s objectively beautiful, like any sorceress, but Jaskier is more than content with Geralt and doesn’t feel even the slightest urge to come on to her, only in part because Yennefer is scary as all fuck. Her long curls are refusing to fall into the potions she’s mixing, probably through magic, and Jaskier can only wonder if she magically dampened her sense of smell too. He’s having a hard time not vomiting into the toxic, noxious solution.

“There’s so much wrong with this,” he mutters as he minces a warg liver.

Triss laughs. It’s a warm, musical sound, and Jaskier spares a moment to think that she’d make a wonderful mother.

“How do you do this?” Jaskier gestures vaguely at the whole room, jars of various herbs and preserved monsters parts lining the room’s shelves. “There are so many ingredients here that are…” He tries to find the right word, ends up scrunching up his face and saying only, “Blech.”

“What can I say?” Triss shrugs and chuckles, idly stirring a potion that hisses and pops. “Unnatural abilities come from unusual ingredients.”

“That… makes sense, I suppose.” He grimaces at the liver. “It doesn’t make this any more pleasant.”

“It takes quite a bit of getting used to,” Triss agrees. “As does all of Kaer Morhen. How are you faring?”

“Good,” Jaskier says honestly. “The informality is bizarre, but it’s good.”

“And the baths?”

Jaskier chuckles as he returns to liver-mincing. “Well, they were a shock the first time, but I’m not shy.”

“No one can afford to be shy here.” Triss smiles into her concoction. “More than, really; you have to be shameless.”

Jaskier finishes mincing the liver and cradles it into one pile with leather glove-covered hands. Triss glances over to the pile and offers a nod of approval; he pretends that it doesn’t cause warmth to swell in his chest, creeping down his limbs to his fingers and toes. He can’t remember a time where he was treated with kindness so frequently; even as a child, when he’d been cute, he had been treated like a prop instead of being offered love. It’s awkward, but the longer he’s here the more he’s getting used to it.

“Dump that in here.” Triss nods to the pot she’s stirring. “Then we can go to lunch and let it sit.”

“You expect me to be able to eat after this?” Jaskier asks, but does as told and gently drops the liver into the potion by the handful. He has to drop the warg liver with care; the potion, unfinished, will eat away at his skin. It’s technically dangerous, but he takes precautions and Triss knows what she’s doing.

“You’ll toughen up soon enough,” Triss tells him.

“I sure hope so.” Jaskier laughs as he wipes the last chunks of liver from his gloved palms into the cauldron. “If I don’t, I’ll waste away from lack of appetite.”

Triss stirs the potion for a few moments longer and then sets the spoon aside. Her and Jaskier take off their aprons and hang them by the door on their way out. He takes a deep breath of air when they step into the hallway, reveling in the lack of offensive odors. The pleased smile on his face only grows wider as they approach the dining hall and the scents of food saturate the air.

Lunch is a more casual affair than dinner and only a tad more formal than breakfast. Jaskier takes his seat at the high table, where at dinner he’s sandwiched by Geralt and Eskel. It’s an arrangement that pleases them all; Geralt and Jaskier get to sit next to each other, and both Geralt and Eskel get to protect Jaskier. What they could possibly protect him from in Geralt’s own keep, he doesn’t know; he’s yet to get a satisfactory answer from either of them.

About halfway through Jaskier’s lunch, eaten in a mostly-empty dining hall, the doors swing open and one of Jaskier’s favorite parts of the day commences. The Witchers, finished with morning training and freshly bathed, storm into the dining hall damp and—in many cases, like with Geralt—not fully dressed. It’s an expanse of gorgeous, gorgeous muscle, but Jaskier only has eyes for Geralt’s phenomenal torso.

He has no doubt that every Witcher in the hall can smell his desire for his soulmate, and couldn’t care less. As disturbing as normal humans tend to find it, Jaskier has no issues with the fact that Witchers can smell his emotions; it means that they work to keep him in an okay emotional state, or at the very least don’t actively do things that make him upset. Negative emotions such as fear or sadness are unpleasant to smell, he’s come to find out, while positive emotions actively smell good. If he weren’t so jealous of Geralt’s ability to literally smell happiness, he would make fun of Geralt for always sticking his nose in his neck.

“How was training?” Jaskier asks as Geralt and Eskel take their seats on either side of him.

“Good.” Geralt reaches out and tugs Jaskier closer just to wrap him in an embrace and press a kiss to his head, although Jaskier notes that the gesture brings Geralt’s nose very close to him and lasts far longer than a quick peck should ever reasonably last. “How was your morning?”

“Fine.” Jaskier shrugs, although the gesture is impeded by Geralt’s giant arm. “I didn’t throw up when I had to dice up a warg liver, which is something.” He twists his head to look at Geralt, who looks stupidly besotted. It’s entirely un-warlord-like, and makes Jaskier’s heart skip a beat in his chest. “My day’s better now that you’re back in it, though.”

Geralt huffs happily and kisses Jaskier full on the mouth, in view of everybody. If any of the Witchers toss leers in their revered leader’s direction, he doesn’t hear them—although he doesn’t think any Witchers would be stupid enough to leer at their king and his soulmate, except maybe Lambert.

Eskel doesn’t leer, but he does make an exaggerated vomiting sound.

“Stop acting like a child,” Great tells Eskel, a smile betraying his harsh tone. “Ciri’s better behaved than that.”

“Ciri’s basically a princess,” Eskel says. “I was raised by heathens.”

“You’re basically an archduke,” Jaskier counters, and amusedly watches Eskel’s face ripple in disgust. Geralt laughs, and it moves through the arm he has draped over Jaskier’s shoulder to shake him too.

After lunch, which Jaskier does manage to fully eat despite his lingering nausea from liver-dicing, he makes his way to the library. For a keep full of Witchers, often considered to be poorly literate, the library is massive. It’s not filled with the normal kind of books, either, which is why Jaskier is so drawn to the place. The books like one would read at Oxenfurt are absent here, where the shelves are occupied by the journals of Witchers—some are alive still, some dead, but all recorded the cold, harsh reality of the Path.

“Hey.” Geralt’s hands settle on his hips, and Jaskier doesn’t hesitate to lean back so that Geralt’s broad—and, sadly, clothed—chest supports his weight. “What’re you thinking about?”

“I’m just curious.” Jaskier cranes his neck to look around at the rows of towering shelves, thousands of stories, all of Witcher history. “Why keep the journals in the library? It feels more like a memorial.”

“It is,” Geralt admits. He slides his arms fully around Jaskier’s waist and settles his chin on Jaskier’s shoulder. “It’s a resting place for those who never got to rest. It’s a place to remember those who came before us, walked beside us. It’s a place to keep the past alive so we don’t forget what we’re doing.”

“And what is it that you’re doing?”

Geralt’s answer is simple: “Protecting.”

“Oh?”

“Witchers were designed to protect the world from monsters; that’s our truest purpose. But the humans turned against us, and we hardened in response, and a cycle was developed. Then the humans turned us against each other, shattered the brotherhood we’d had, and isolated us not only from humanity but from our own brethren.”

Jaskier lets out a small, sad sound that sinks into the blood-splattered, finger-softened pages around him. He knows all too well what such isolation feels like.

“By the time I realized that we needed to band together and turn our attention to a wider variety of monster, lest we go extinct and let all the suffering that we and our brothers had endured be for naught, we had forgotten our origins. This…” Geralt removes an arm from Jaskier’s waist to broadly gesture towards their surroundings. “It’s to help us remember what happened, so it cannot happen again, and it’s to help us see each other, so we don’t return to that isolation.”

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak all at once,” Jaskier says to hide the tears that tighten his throat and wet his eyes.

“There’s a lot more that can be said, here.”

“I want to write about this,” Jaskier blurts. “About Witchers—who they truly are.” His hands, resting over Geralt’s, tighten as his half-baked idea grows into something much more solid. “None of you deserve to be seen the way that those outside of your lands see you. Not even Lambert, although it pains me to say as much.”

“What do you need?” Geralt asks against his neck. What must determination smell like? He’s sure he reeks of it.

“I need—” Jaskier bites his lip as he considers what he wants to do, what he has to do to build up to that point. “The origin of Witchers. Is that anywhere in here? And the humans turning on Witchers, and the Witchers turning on themselves, and the saddest stories you have.”

“Go find a place to sit,” Geralt says as he unwraps himself from Jaskier. “I’ll bring you what you need.”

“Do you not have a librarian?” Jaskier asks as he wanders through stacks, to where a small table and comfortable chair are sat in front of a tall window. There are no fires allowed in the library, but warmer weather is making itself known and Jaskier’s clothing—a pale blue breeches-and-doublet set that was brought to Kaer Morhen along with the rest of his clothes, barring the shawls, upon the instillation of a vassal regency in Redania—is enough to keep him from freezing in the day. “I would think that you’d have at least one person to keep this place in order.”

“It’s not used often,” is Geralt’s response, his voice raised to carry. “And it’s laid out logically; we don’t put things back in the wrong place. I’ll explain it to you later, if you’d like.”

“I’d love that.”

Jaskier props his head on a fist and stares out at the scenic mountain view as Geralt collects the books that will help Jaskier the most. His whole body feels warmed, not by lust or flame but by love. Geralt is painfully sweet, and even after two weeks it’s clear to Jaskier that he only took the role of warlord because his fellow Witchers had wanted him to be their voice. He would’ve been happy to step down and let somebody else take the mantle of warlord—provided they were competent, of course—if the title of warlord hadn’t wrapped itself around him and sunk into the bone. He’s no warmonger, no iron-fisted tyrant, no beast. He’s the most human man that Jaskier’s ever met, actually, if one were to use the word as a compliment.

“Here.” The table thunks as a veritable tower of books is set down before Jaskier. “This one is about the creation of Witchers, although there’s a lot of alchemical shit that you’ll probably want to skip. There’s a little in it about the humans turning on us, and more in this book.” Jaskier peers at the wobbly mountain of journals, the pages inflated and the leather warped by age. Each journal has a small cord of leather that can be used as a placeholder. “I marked the places in the journals I thought you’d be most interested in; some of them are about the Witcher schools turning on each other—there’s more about that in this book, but those are personal accounts—and the others are just sad, like you asked.”

“I—Thank you,” Jaskier says. There’s far more than he expected. He’s both pleased and mortified by Geralt flipping through each of the many journals to mark sections of interest, but works hard to crush the feeling with a mental, Geralt-shaped bludgeon. He deserves happiness, he tells himself sternly despite how false the words feel. He deserves a man who will flip through Witcher journals to find the places that will help Jaskier the most. “This is a lot of books for such a short amount of time.”

Geralt shrugs. “I helped come up with the library’s organization system, and I think I’ve read everything in here at least once.”

“Your memory is that good?” Jaskier asks incredulously. “There’s a vast amount of information in here.”

Geralt shrugs, looking away like the praise makes him uncomfortable.

Jaskier looks to the massive pile of books in an effort to give Geralt some imagined space, considering where to start. At the beginning, most likely, although he’s itching to just sit and read the journals. They won’t be happy, he knows, but he’s no stranger to sadness himself and shouldn’t be overly affected.

“I’m going to be here for a while,” he says. “Not that I’m complaining; I love learning.”

Geralt moves closer to Jaskier, places a hand on his shoulder. As much as Jaskier revels in the touch, he knows that it’s not for him; Geralt has a nearly obsessive need to touch, like he’s perpetually trying to remind himself that Jaskier is real. He leans into it anyway.

“Did you get to learn much in Redania?” he asks, a tentative softness to his voice. Despite Jaskier’s repeated emphasis that his past doesn’t need to be a big deal, he can appreciate some tasteful delicacy, especially when it comes from Geralt.

“I only learned what I could pick up by listening.” Jaskier pauses before amending his statement. “Well, I was taught some things, but nothing proper.”

Geralt hums. He knows it’s a deliberately hard-to-read sound, because Geralt doesn’t want his true emotions to potentially upset him. There’s sadness there, that Jaskier spent his teen years in such a way. There’s anger, too. He’s angry that Jaskier was so callously thrown away by the people who had raised him, that Vizimir could stomach sleeping with someone only a few years older than his own child, that he was denied the education he should have had. Geralt’s protectiveness is endearing; Jaskier can’t remember the last time somebody cared for him so selflessly, with no ulterior motives.

“All our knowledge is yours,” Geralt says, and presses a kiss to the top of Jaskier’s head.

“You know just the way to my heart.” Jaskier turns his head upwards with a smile that only grows bigger when Geralt takes his unspoken cue and kisses his mouth. “Not that I don’t adore your presence, but don’t you have something warlord-y to be doing?

“Does mentally plotting the downfall of the Count de Lettenhove count?”

“Mmm.” He laughs and leans into Geralt. “It might.” After a few moments he speaks again, just a hair too curious to keep quiet. “Do you really plan on doing anything?”

“Depends on what you want. If you say so, I’ll leave him alone—unless he steps out of line. But I’m happy to string him up for you.”

“I never knew violence could be such a romantic gesture before I met you,” Jaskier sighs. “No, don’t string him up for me—just terrify him and let him stew in anxiety.” He flashes Geralt a sharkish grin. “It’s the least he deserves.”

“Vicious,” Geralt murmurs, a smirk twisting his lips. “Any other requests?”

Jaskier’s amusement vanishes like his innocence had. He frowns down at the table, and although he doesn’t lean away from Geralt it’s a close thing. “I… It’s silly.”

“Nonsense.” Geralt brushes his fingers across the base of Jaskier’s neck. “What is it? If it’s in my power, I assure you it will be done.”

“You don’t even know what I want,” Jaskier chuckles, slightly cheered by Geralt’s determination.

“I know you wouldn’t ask anything too outrageous.”

Jaskier takes a deep breath. “My parents,” he says. “My birth ones. I was a Child Surprise, not an orphan; the people who raised me know who gave birth to me.”

“Do you want to find them,” Geralt asks, “or just know who they were?”

“I don’t know.” Jaskier wraps his arms around himself. “Find them, maybe. If they’re as callous as the people who raised me, I want—I _deserve_ to know. I don’t want to drift in fantasies of loving parents; fairy tales are for children.”

Geralt slings an arm around his shoulder and shifts their position, tugging Jaskier forward until his head is pressed into Geralt’s upper stomach. Jaskier wraps his arms around Geralt’s trim hips and clings, letting his vision disappear as the smell of Geralt floods his senses. He feels himself relax to the point where it’s an effort to keep his arms around Geralt’s hips.

“I’ll find out who they were for you,” Geralt promises. “Good or bad, I’ll get you to them.”

“You’re too sweet,” Jaskier mumbles into Geralt’s shirt, feeling his throat clog with too many emotions. “Is Eskel going to send a search party after you if you don’t get back to paper-signing or whatever else you do?”

Geralt heaves a massive sigh that jostles Jaskier’s head. “Probably. Or maybe he’ll just sic Lambert on me.”

“That would be worse,” Jaskier groans, sitting up and shoving Geralt away. He’s smiling, though, and even if he wasn’t he knows Geralt would be able to smell his lifted spirits. “Go on, then.”

“You’re not going to protect me from him?”

“Gods no. Now shoo; I won’t have him interrupting such delicate work.”

Geralt grins. “You haven’t even opened any of them yet.”

“No, but I need to.” Jaskier looks at the pile and thinks of how many hours it will take to get through it all. “This is hardly light reading.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ve got to go find Eskel before he finds me.”

The library is almost too quiet once Geralt leaves, but the silence helps Jaskier sink into the stories laid out before him. He knows before he even opens the first book that they’re stories deserving of silence; it would feel disrespectful to read them in a louder setting, or even to take the journals out of the library. He’s many things, but he’s not nearly bold or cruel enough to disrespect a memorial.

For the rest of the day, Jaskier is glued to the books. Even after dinner, he returns to the library instead of his and Geralt’s rooms. He reads about the creation of the Witchers, men mutated by sorcerers and made into defenders. He reads about how mankind grew scared of their prowess, of their unnatural creation, and turned against them. He reads about Kaedweni royalty turning two schools against each other and decimating the Witcher population. He reads about strongholds of Witchers being overwhelmed by humans due to sheer quantity, about the few remaining Witchers living in ever-crumbling ruins, about low numbers steadily dwindling because monsters were still being born and Witchers weren’t.

It breaks his heart in half, and he hasn’t even made it to the sad stories yet.

They’re curled up together that night as they drift towards sleep, Jaskier’s fingers brushing idly over the myriad of scars on Geralt’s chest. From the way Geralt’s chest rises and falls Jaskier can tell that he’s not yet asleep, which is good because he wouldn’t want to disturb his sleep but also really wants to trace those scars.

As he drags his fingers across Geralt’s chest, he can’t help but wonder about their origins. This one, the bad one that curls around from Geralt’s ribs and vanishes over his stomach. How close did he come to death? Were human townspeople reluctant to offer aid, if they offered any at all? Did they leave him, their wounded protector, to die because he wasn’t like them?

Certainly there were other Witchers who died like that, abandoned by humans who could’ve saved them but chose not to due simply to their otherness. And the massacre in Kaedwen, organized by humans, designed to wipe out those that stood between them and _real_ beasts. How many Witchers or Witchers-to-be survived the initial bloodbath, only to be taken by preventable means? 

The thought of such cruelty directed towards the first people in years to see him as a real person—towards his _soulmate,_ the best person he’s ever met—is enough to twist his stomach and gouge at his throat. He doesn’t even realize that his vision is blurring with tears until Geralt’s begins to card his fingers through Jaskier’s hair, his eyes open and face creased with worry.

“Jask, what’s wrong?” he murmurs.

Jaskier sniffles and then throws himself at Geralt as best he can, managing to get his body half on top of Geralt’s and burying his face in Geralt’s neck. A loud sob bursts from him and is immediately smothered.

“I can’t—” He sucks in a shaky, staccato breath. “It’s just so fucking sad, Geralt, it makes my very soul hurt. You all deserve so much better than you got; you shouldn’t have had to become a warlord and conquer kingdoms to get better treatment.”

“You’re one to talk,” Geralt murmurs. He shifts to wrap Jaskier in a tight embrace, pulling him upwards until Jaskier lays draped fully over him. “You deserve better than you got, too.”

“But it was only a few years,” Jaskier mumbles. “Your people have suffered for centuries.”

“All the other non-humans have suffered too,” Geralt points out, much to Jaskier’s despair.

He groans into Geralt’s neck. “Oh, don’t get me started on the others. I’m far too distraught by Witchers at the moment.”

Geralt probably doesn’t mean for Jaskier to hear his breathed: “You’re so much more than I deserve,” but he does, and doesn’t take it well.

_“I’m_ more than _you_ deserve?” he demands, propping himself up on his elbows to glare down at Geralt. “I never could’ve dreamed that my soulmate would be half as wonderful as you. I mean, what business does a semi-noble ex-slave have being soulmates with—with—with _you?”_ Although he has to keep his elbows pressed into the bed to remain above Geralt, he does his best to gesture with his hands. “You, with hair like distilled moonlight, and the prettiest cat’s eyes, and _criminally_ attractive muscle, and the determination not to be powerful but to be _good,_ and the patience to let his daughter braid his hair even if she’s not very talented at it, and the character to raise a Child Surprise with an abundance of love and never treat her like a burden, and the determination to make the world a better place even for people who hate you, and—again— _beautiful_ hair.”

“That’s all you think of yourself as?” Geralt sounds gutted and, predictably, entirely ignores all of Jaskier’s praises of him. “A semi-noble ex-slave?”

“Of course that’s what I think of myself as; that’s what I am.”

“What you _are,”_ Geralt begins, his eyebrows pinching together as a frown steals across his face, “is phenomenal. You had the strength to be sold by those who raised you, endure years of abuse, and come out on the other side strong instead of broken. You’re so good with Ciri and never bitter about her fortune. You see the good in Witchers, in _me,_ when most of the Continent is content to revile us.” He shakes his head. “Jaskier, you think you don’t deserve me, but it’s precisely the other way around.”

Jaskier makes an affronted noise through flustered tears and moves to repeat his prior sentiments, but is cut off by just a soft, pleading look from Geralt.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” he says. “I’m over a hundred years old, and most of those years weren’t spent as a warlord.”

“I may not know everything you’ve done,” Jaskier admits thickly, pressing Geralt’s face between his shaking hands, “but I know _you,_ and I know that you’re a good man.”

With a gentle grip on his hair, Geralt pulls Jaskier’s head down until their foreheads bump gently together. He doesn’t flinch when Jaskier’s tears drip onto his face, onto his eyelids almost like he’s the one crying.

“You’re a miracle,” he whispers roughly.

“No more than you,” Jaskier whispers back, breathing his heart into the space between their lips.

He doesn’t know what he smells like to Geralt. Perhaps love. Or disbelief, if there’s a scent for that. Geralt has said that there’s not a scent for every emotion, although he hadn’t provided a list of what did and didn’t have scents. In any case, it feels impossible for Geralt not to know what he’s feeling when there’s so much of it that it’s quite literally leaking from him. His chest still aches, but Geralt’s presence makes it better.

He falls asleep using Geralt as a mattress, the side of his soulmate’s scarred neck made tacky by tears. If Geralt minds, he doesn’t say anything.

Triss notices the next morning when his mind refuses to settle. She glances at him out of the corner of her vision as they stand side by side at the long, instrument-laden brewing table. He notices; she’s been doing it once every few seconds for the entire time they’ve been in here.

“What’s got your mind so scattered?” she finally asks.

“I did a lot of reading yesterday about the history of Witchers,” he says. “It’s… so sad.” He turns to face Triss fully. “It’s _so sad,_ Triss.”

“It is sad,” she agrees. “Lonely, and cold, and sad.” She shakes her head, sweet face pinched in sympathy. “They deserve the home they’ve built. The community.”

“They deserve love.” Jaskier scowls at the ingredients before him and turns his anger towards them, pleased that he can put it somewhere instead of letting it bottle up to sting the noses of any Witchers in smelling distance. “And if I have to go around and hug every single Witcher all on my own, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“You’ve already had more of an effect than you know,” Triss says vaguely, but refuses to elaborate despite Jaskier’s incessant needling for the rest of the morning.

The afternoon finds Jaskier in the library again, his seat and tower of books untouched. The journals with the sad stories are in their own small stack and, done with the plain history, he moves on with careful hands. The journals feel completely normal to the touch, the leather gone soft with age and frequent contact, the old pages rustling and slightly rigid. He doesn’t know what he expected—for them to be cold with injustice, heavy with the weight of their old owners’ sorrow? He stares at the first one for a long time before opening it, wondering what hands might’ve first held it and where they are now.

The very first page often bears the name of the owner, Jaskier finds as he flips through them. Henri, School of the Bear. Piotr, School of the Cat. Rigel, School of the Griffin. Geralt, School of the Wolf.

...Geralt? Wolf?

Jaskier’s curiosity is piqued. He wants so badly to skip to that story, to see if Geralt had pulled one of his own journals down for Jaskier to read, but he forces himself to put it off until last; if it is his Geralt, he’ll want to read the entire journal and will hopelessly sidetrack himself. So he shakes his head and sets the ichor-stained journal aside.

Henri had rescued a little girl, approximately eight years old, from a wyvern. He’d carried her back to town because her leg had been cut. She had shown little fear in the face of her rescuer, but the townspeople had all but ripped her from his arms and ran him out of town for “attempting to molest her.” He had managed to collect his bags and horse first—barely—but the stoning he received was brutal and shattered the healing potion he’d been desperate to take. By the time he reached the town’s edge, the girl he had just saved was amongst the jeering townspeople, hurling tiny stones at his head.

Jaskier, both anxious and curious, flips to the final page of the journal. Full. So he had lived to start another journal, at least.

Piotr had returned to the Cat stronghold only to find his people decimated, having been on the Path in the far south during the tournament that had nearly destroyed both the Cat and Wolf schools. He had all but torn the home of the Cats apart in a desperate effort to find his twin brother, both of them abandoned and turned into Cat Witchers, and come up empty; his brother, the person closest to him than anybody else, had been one of the victims in Kaedwen.

His journal ends three entries afterwards.

Rigel, apparently, had pale blonde hair that had—at the time of the entry—been long. He recounts arriving in a village in northern Redania only to be stoned before he could even inquire about a job, shouts of “Butcher” chasing him away. The entries continue, days of the same treatment from all nearby villages as his money dwindled. He eventually pieced together the story of a Witcher with long, pale hair that had butchered half of a town and tanked the reputation of Witchers across the northern half of the Continent. So he cut his hair. That didn’t stop a large group of bandits from attempting to kill him on the road, buoyed by the gruesome rumors they’d heard. He managed to survive the encounter but without his desperately needed healing potions, like Henri. That’s the very last entry, written in a rushed hand on pages smeared with dried blood.

Jaskier has cried over each of the three journals, and has to sit and compose himself before he can open Geralt’s. He can’t help but to be glad that Geralt is performing his warlord duties instead of spending the afternoon with him; the poor man would be horrified by his response to the journals. After the first time Jaskier cried, Geralt probably would’ve taken the rest of the journals away and insisted on holding Jaskier until he had fully calmed down.

With trembling fingers, Jaskier opens the final journal. There are two distinctly marked entries, which is interesting. Each of the other journals only had one marked entry with the exception of Rigel, but Rigel’s entries had been sequential.

He flips to the first entry and reads of a young Witcher named Geralt attending a tournament between the Cat and Wolf schools in Kaedwen. He and another Wolf named Gweld—a close friend of Geralt’s, a man who had passed the trials with Geralt and was akin to a brother—realized that the tournament was not a tournament at all, but a ruse, just in time for Gweld to be enchanted and driven into a bloodthirsty rage. With no other choice, Geralt was forced to kill his friend and flee the festival during the ensuing bloodbath.

The second entry is no better. It details a town called Blaviken in northern Redania, where Geralt was forced to choose the lesser of two evils in a conflict he never wanted to partake in. In the end, he was left with several dead bodies and received both a stoning and a nickname for his efforts: the Butcher of Blaviken.

It doesn’t take long at all for everything to fall into place. Rigel had been killed because they thought he was the Butcher, who apparently had had long, pale hair. Geralt had long, pale hair and was known as the Northern Butcher. Geralt was also the name of the Witcher who had been run out of Blaviken.

He puts his head in his hands and tries to pull himself together. He just can’t picture Geralt, sweet and protective and deceptively shy, suffering through any of what he’s just read. Part of him wants to find all of Geralt’s journals, to read every single one; the other part of him views that as a massive invasion of privacy and wants to wait for Geralt to tell him everything in his own time. He knows that he wouldn’t want Geralt reading through a diary of his life without his knowledge, even if he were to bookmark one of the entries for him to read.

In the end, he leaves the books on the table for someone more knowledgeable of the library to put away. His hands shake when he sets Geralt’s journal back atop the pile. How innocuous it looks, just like any other journal. But Jaskier knows what’s in it.

He walks dazedly through the hallways of Kaer Morhen. His head feels stuffed with cotton, and nothing quite feels real. It all feels rather like a dream.

He’s aware of walking down the hallway, of rounding a corner and bouncing off of Lambert, who laughs and ridicules him for his obliviousness until: “Buttercup, hey, are you alright?”

“I’m…” Jaskier purses his lips. “I need… to sit down? I don’t know.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder. He thinks it’s Lambert’s.

“Why don’t you let me walk you to Geralt’s office,” he says, his usual snark gone.

“No, no.” He waves vaguely in a random direction. “I… can get there by myself. Uh, I…” He frowns at Lambert’s stubble. It looks darker in one spot. “Yeah. It’s fine. I think I need a nap, is all.”

“If you’re sure,” Lambert says. His lips are flat, his eyebrows all wiggly.

“Yeah.” Jaskier offers a wan smile and reaches out to pat Lambert’s shoulder. It’s very warm, his shoulder, and very muscular. “I’m sure.”

He does make it to Geralt’s office just fine on his own, although he can’t really walk in a straight line. His office has been charmed by Yennefer so that the hearth lights when someone enters the room, and it leaps to life now. He sits in Geralt’s chair and squints at the fire, slowly slouching lower in the seat.

“Jask?” Geralt steps into the room with cautious feet and godly eyes. Lambert stands behind him in the doorway, but shuts it as soon as Geralt has stepped fully into the room.

“That last journal was yours, wasn’t it?” Jaskier asks, and sticks out his tongue to lick his dry lips. “Geralt, School of the Wolf. There’s a reason you’re called the Northern Butcher.”

Geralt—strong Geralt, brave Geralt—ducks his head. He looks small. Cowed. _Ashamed._ “Yes. It’s mine. I would… I would understand. If you wanted to walk away. I told you last night; you don’t know what I’ve done. But you do now. You know that I killed Gweld, and I may as well have killed Rigel myself. Fellow Witchers, dead because of me.”

“I would never walk away from you,” Jaskier whispers. “And as I told you last night, I _know_ you. Come here, love.”

Looking like a chastised child, still refusing to meet Jaskier’s eyes, Geralt does as asked. The sight of him looking so defeated despite what Jaskier’s said hurts like a stab wound. Or at least, he imagines it does. He’s never actually been stabbed with a blade before.

“Take my hands,” Jaskier instructs quietly. He’s not exactly in the right state of mind for this, but Geralt appears to be worse off.

It looks like it pains him, but Geralt takes Jaskier’s outstretched hands and—much to Jaskier’s shock—drops to his knees, head bowed. The gesture knocks the breath from Jaskier’s lungs more effectively than any kind of punch. He’s gotten so used to Geralt over such little time that he’s almost forgotten just who Geralt is, that it’s the _White Wolf_ who kneels before Jaskier.

“I don’t deserve you,” Geralt rasps, shuffling closer to press his forehead into Jaskier’s knee. “Fuck, Jaskier, I don’t—How could you love me after reading about what I’ve done?”

“Geralt,” Jaskier asks quietly, squeezing Geralt’s giant hands in his, “were those readings an attempt to scare me away?”

He doesn’t answer, just presses his head into Jaskier’s leg with increasing force and makes sharp gasping sounds. Tearless crying; the only kind that Witchers can manage.

“My love,” Jaskier sighs. “My love, I have looked right at the ugliest parts of humanity, and you think that misfortune visited upon you will be enough to drive me from your side?” He bends forward to press his mouth to Geralt’s hair, falling loose from another of Ciri’s deplorable braids. “Nothing in this world could do that. Not the most powerful mages, the richest kings, the fiercest monsters; _nothing._ Do you understand me? Your journal only made me love you more, if anything.”

Geralt’s grip on his hands have tightened to the point where Jaskier’s honestly worried they might break, but Triss is a stupendous healer and she likes him, so he’s not all that concerned. He lets Geralt squeeze his hands with all his Witcher strength and make ugly gasping groans against his breeches, agonized breath warming and dampening the fabric.

“Show me the ugliest part of you,” Jaskier whispers, “and I will tell you why I love it; Geralt, you are my very heart and soul. I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”

“Don’t leave me,” Geralt gasps. His entire frame, broad as it is, trembles like the last autumn leaf in a blizzard. “Don’t leave me, please.”

“Only so long as you promise not to leave me,” Jaskier agrees.

“Never,” Geralt gasps. Jaskier kisses the top of his head, every square inch he can reach. “Never, never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this! Although I'll admit that I didn't plan for it to go the way it did, I'm essentially incapable of writing anything that doesn't include some sort of angst. And Geralt deserves comfort too! With any luck my brain will continue to cooperate; I have vague plans for at least one more work in this series.


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